Indigenous leaders seek global pact to preserve 80% of Amazon forest

Indigenous representatives from all nine Amazon Basin countries, gathered in the Peruvian capital Lima this week, pressed world leaders to adopt a global pact to protect 80% of the Amazon forest by 2025.
The call comes as the world’s largest tropical rainforest – a key weapon in the fight against climate change due to its role in storing carbon – edges ever closer to a tipping point beyond which it might never recover, scientists have warned.
The plan for an “80×25” pact will be presented to governments at November’s U.N. COP27 climate conference in Egypt and the U.N. biodiversity summit in Montreal in December.
Deforestation in the Amazon surged to unprecedented levels last year, alongside violent attacks on the local communities crucial to preventing the environmental destruction driving climate change, biodiversity loss and pandemic risk.
In new research released this week, scientists and the world’s largest indigenous organisation found that Brazil and Bolivia are home to 90% of total deforestation and degradation in the Amazon region.